Optional Tweaks
1) In your Options\Effects uncheck, and Disable "Ship Mesh Highlight Filter". Having this enabled WILL cause some wierd lighting issues with modded ships.
Example: Some ships appear much brighter than others almost like the hull is glowing.
The "Ship Mesh Highlight Filter" feature was meant for you to easily see very small ships at a distance. SGI does not need this feature. We have not yet figured out how to adjust the parameters to work with modded ships. It is best to disable it for now.
2) You can tweak how bright the ships appear in game, but you will have to do some "modding" yourself. The Sins engine renders the ships extremely dark depending on what map, or background you chose. The Ship Mesh Highlight Filter is supposed to compensate for this. However we have not had any time to tweak the modded ships to use this feature yet. There is an alternative.
Open the GS_Ship file located in the mods "PipelineEffect" folder with notepad, or wordpad. (you will need to copy/paste this file from your sins install PipelineEffect folder into the mods PipelineEffect folder)
The line itself is over half way down and looks like this:
float4 GetLightColor(float3 incidence, float3 normal, float4 liteLightColor, float4 darkLightColor)
{
float dot = max(dot(incidence, normal), 0.f);
float lerpPercent = 1.f - clamp(pow(dot, 5.f), 0.f, 1.f); <------ This is the line you are looking for.
float blackThreshold = .65f;
float colorLerpPercent = min(lerpPercent / blackThreshold, 1.f);
Now, its the Float lerpPercent = 1.f that is the magic number. I have mine at .89, yours should be at 1.f (the default setting). When you lower the number, the ships get brighter. Raise the number they get darker...
Now this works for most NVIDIA users. For ATI users you may need to do the opposite. You RAISE the number, and the ships get brighter. When you lower it they get darker. I would have incorporated this into the mod, but since Ironclad never fixed the Nvidia/ATI bugs it is here as an optional tweak. Use it only if you wish to. Just make a backup of the original file in case you screw it up.
Thank you Admiral Cobbs for finding this out!! :)
Open the GS_Ship file located in the mods "PipelineEffect" folder with notepad, or wordpad. (you will need to copy/paste this file from your sins install PipelineEffect folder into the mods PipelineEffect folder)
The line itself is over half way down and looks like this:
float4 GetLightColor(float3 incidence, float3 normal, float4 liteLightColor, float4 darkLightColor)
{
float dot = max(dot(incidence, normal), 0.f);
float lerpPercent = 1.f - clamp(pow(dot, 5.f), 0.f, 1.f); <------ This is the line you are looking for.
float blackThreshold = .65f;
float colorLerpPercent = min(lerpPercent / blackThreshold, 1.f);
Now, its the Float lerpPercent = 1.f that is the magic number. I have mine at .89, yours should be at 1.f (the default setting). When you lower the number, the ships get brighter. Raise the number they get darker...
Now this works for most NVIDIA users. For ATI users you may need to do the opposite. You RAISE the number, and the ships get brighter. When you lower it they get darker. I would have incorporated this into the mod, but since Ironclad never fixed the Nvidia/ATI bugs it is here as an optional tweak. Use it only if you wish to. Just make a backup of the original file in case you screw it up.
Thank you Admiral Cobbs for finding this out!! :)